Born to Run (53 page)

Joni came on and did a beautiful set, followed by Van, swinging and lifting the house. Van Morrison has always been one of my great, great heroes and an enormous source of inspiration for everything I’ve done. Van put the white soul into our early
E Street records. Without Van, there is no “New York City Serenade” or jazz soul of “Kitty’s Back.” Then out came Dylan in great form. Playing with a band he’d been working with for quite a while, he’d tightened his music into roadhouse poetry. They felt like they’d be at home in an arena this size or in the little bar down the road a ways. The band grooved joyous blues that even got their front
man dancing a little! This music, his happiness, these artists, made me happy as I stood alongside my mom and we danced in our seats. Watching the crowd was funny and a little disorienting. I felt like I’d fallen asleep, a sixteen-year-old with
Highway 61 Revisited
spinning endlessly in the dark night of my bedroom, and woken up fifty years hence in a rock ’n’ roll, Rip Van Winkle–like dream.
We’d all gotten . . . OLD! The seats were filled with middle-aged, wrinkled, out-of-shape, balding, gray-bearded rock fans straight out of the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four.” We all looked kind of . . . ridiculous! But something else was happening. Young hipsters and teenagers were scattered through the crowd. Little kids were there, brought by their parents to see and hear the great man. Some were
bored, some sleeping and many dancing alongside Mom and Pop. People were filled with heart, good cheer and emotion. I thought about my gray hairs and the wrinkles on my face. I looked over at my mother, seventy-two, her face a loving map of all our pain and resilience. She was beaming ear to ear, her arm tucked in mine. The floor was a mass of smiles and swaying bodies, and as I watched, I thought,
“I can do this. I can bring this, this happiness, these smiles.” I went home and called the E Street Band.

SIXTY-FIVE

REVIVAL

. . . First, of course, I fretted, worried, questioned, discussed, debated, dismissed, rethought, reconsidered and thought some more. I wanted my reasoning to be sound and I did not want to reconstitute a nostalgia act to run the new oldies circuit. (Though I’ve actually gotten plenty of pleasure out of some of those oldies shows when the performers are laying down their hearts.
If your heart is in it, it ain’t old.) Still, I was coming off a deeply satisfying solo tour that had felt very
present
, hadn’t played with the band in ten years, still held a few mild grudges and was worried about whether the whole thing would actually work.

It came down to this: I’d studied, honed, worked and sweated to acquire a set of skills that when put into action made me one of the best
in the world at what I did. Those skills were at their apex with a hard-driving band, and, I’d come to realize, not just any band. Time, history, memory, collective experience had made this so. Working with my band of the early nineties, I’d learned that as much as I enjoyed playing with a new set of
musicians and as good as I thought we were, there would be, in my lifetime, no other group of
musicians with whom I would step onto the stage with a quarter century of blood, sweat and tears under our belt but the E Street Band. There were only these eight men and women. Their style and playing abilities had long been hand stitched to fit me perfectly. More important, when the fans looked at those faces onstage, they saw themselves, their lives, their friends looking back at them. In the new
digital world of three-second attention spans, where the cold, hard hand of impermanence and numbered anonymity holds sway, this was irreplaceable. It was real, and we’d built it the way real things are built, moment upon moment, hour upon hour, day after day, year after year. I came to the conclusion I’d need a pretty good reason to
not
exercise my skills at the still-very-young age of forty-eight
with this group of musicians sitting at home. I didn’t have one. Everyone had found their own way but no one had found—and they wouldn’t, not now or ever—another E Street Band.

There was residual tension in the band but a lot more love than in most, or any, I knew of. And . . . it had been ten years. I wasn’t hearing myself so regularly on the radio anymore. What we’d done was getting farther
away, receding into rock’s glorious but embalmed past. I didn’t like that. We were far too formidable a unit to go gently into that good night. I remained too filled with ambition, ego, hunger, desire and a righteous sense of musical power to let a life’s work slip into the respectful annals of rock history. As surely as death, taxes and the hunger for new heroes, that day would come . . . but not
 . . . right . . . now! Not if I had anything to do with it. Not while I was a mighty, strapping, psychosis-filled rock ’n’ soul shouter. Not yet.

It’s On!

Rock ’n’ roll bands that
last
have to come to one basic human realization. It is: the guy standing next to you is more important than you think he is.
And that man or woman must come to the same realization about the man or woman standing next
to him or her, about
you
. Or: everyone must be broke, living far beyond their means and in need of hard currency. Or: both.

A decade of seat-warming the ex–rock ’n’ roll gods’ bench sharpens the mind and softens everyone’s perspective on any mild mistreatments from the past. That is a good thing. We all must wake up one morning, or different mornings, and think, “You know, that thing, that thing
I had, was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It was good for my life, it was good in my life and if the opportunity should ever again arise . . .” It arose, for all of us, and we were about to make the most of it, whatever each individual’s motivations may have been.

In our last incarnation there had been no Steve Van Zandt. I had to think about that. If we were going, I wanted
all of us to go. First I needed to make a courtesy call to Nils. Nils had done much more than step in and replace my old friend Steve over the years. He became a very responsible second lieutenant, fully committed to his position in the band and giving everything he had. On top of that, Nils was just a beautiful guy to be around. He was an assured, calming, inspiring presence and one of the world’s
great guitarists. Within the band, he was ego-free. If an entire night passed without a solo, no problem. He was a total team player who arrived at the hall hours before everyone else to ready himself for the work. He carried an archive of music for every possible song choice I might pull out of the hat, prepared himself and tutored others in chord structure and arrangements for the night’s specialty
items. Between Nils and Max, another deep student of our work, I always had somewhere to go if
I
had any questions about something I’d written. I called Nils, told him what I wanted to do, assured him I appreciated and understood the great work and commitment he’d shown our band, explained his position would not change and asked his blessing. Nils, ever the gentleman and loyal soldier, told me
if that’s what I thought was best, he was behind me. Then I called Steve.

Despite our great friendship, or because of it, Steve can be a powerful
force, and with his great energy he can be unintentionally destabilizing. Steve’s word on something will often tip the scales for me one way or another. His often hilarious point of view constantly loosens things up, keeps me grounded, and his mere
presence makes me feel all will be well. He’s also a serious thinker about rock ’n’ roll, what it means and can do. The friction and the rub in Steve’s opinions is often where he is most valuable to me, but in the past, he could unintentionally cross the line, entering into band politics in a way that sometimes made my job tougher. We’d need to talk about that. We did, one afternoon at my home. We
had a friendly but tough conversation. I got to air my remaining grievances and hear Steve’s point of view, and we put it away. We proceeded to have the best eighteen years of our work life and friendship.

When I called Clarence, he told me he’d been waiting for ten years and asked where I had been. As I’ve said, plenty of the guys had found their own second acts and been very successful, but
there is something about walking onstage in front of seventy-five thousand screaming fans with the oldest friends of your life, playing music that is ingrained in you, that’s hard to replace. If you had it for one—just
one
—evening, you’d never forget it. To go there night after night, over a lifetime, is an unimaginable, immeasurable pleasure and privilege. After ten years apart,
this
was something
we all understood and had come to appreciate in a new way. We were nine of a handful of people on the planet who had earned that privilege. Now, firmly and finally, in our middle age, we understood its significance. But if we were going to do this, if
I
was going to do it, I wanted to be sure it would be “easy,” that it would be fun. The work would be hard enough. The past had to be over and done
with; all grudges, money issues, slights—real or imagined—would need to be put away.

An example: One day I had one of my musicians come to me and explain he would need more money if he were to continue doing his work. I told him if he could find a more highly paid musician at his job in the world, I would gladly up his percentage. I also told him I could spare him the time
to search. All he had
to do was walk into the bathroom, close the door and walk over and take a look in the mirror. There he’d find the highest-paid musician in the world at his post. I told him, “That’s how it works in the real world.” He then looked straight at me and, without a trace of irony, asked, “What do we have to do with the real world?” At that moment I knew I had sheltered some of my colleagues perhaps a
bit too much.

Right now, I just wanted to enjoy myself with my great friends doing the thing we do best together. If we couldn’t do that, I’d prefer simply to leave it. We were still young but too old to recomplicate our lives by engaging in any venture that wasn’t going to be rewarding and a pleasure to all.

Along with (when necessary) supreme confidence, doubt and all of its many manifestations
is in my wheelhouse. You work that right and it’s a blessing. You work it wrong and you’re paralyzed. Doubt can be the starting point for deeper critical thought. It can keep you from selling yourself and your audience short and it can bring you hard down to Earth if needed. Before our ten-years-coming Asbury Park opening night, I’d experience plenty of it.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

I’d attended
several early ceremonies of the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In its second year, I’d gone to induct Roy Orbison, then had the honor of inducting Bob Dylan. These were two of my most telling influences. To be chosen to present them with their induction meant a great deal to me. After the ceremonies, during the all-star jam, which in those days featured every musician in the house, I’d stood
onstage between Mick Jagger and George Harrison, all of us together on one mike, singing “I Saw Her Standing There.” I was thinking, “What’s wrong with this picture?” How did a kid from New Jersey end up, on this evening, between these two men whose work had driven so deeply into his soul that he had to follow the road they laid out before him, follow it with everything he had?

Look at it like
this: In 1964, millions of kids saw the Stones and the Beatles and decided, “That looks like fun.”
Some
of them went out and bought instruments.
Some
of them learned to play a little.
Some
got good enough to maybe join a local band.
Some
might have even made a demo tape.
Some
might have lucked out and gotten a record deal of some sort. A
few
of those might have sold some records and done some
touring. A
few
of those might have had a small hit, a short career in music, and managed to eke out a modest living. A
very few
of those might have managed to make a life as a musician, and a
very, very few
might have had some continuing success that brought them fame, fortune and deep gratification, and tonight,
one
of those ended up standing between Mick Jagger and George Harrison, a Stone and
a Beatle. I did not fool myself about what the odds were back in 1964 that that
one
would’ve been the acne-faced fifteen-year-old kid with the cheap Kent guitar from Freehold, New Jersey. My parents were RIGHT! My chances
were
ONE, ONE in a MILLION, in MANY MILLIONS. But still . . . here I was. I knew my talents and I knew I worked hard, but THESE, THESE WERE THE GODS, and I was, well . . . one
hardworking guitar man. I carried the journeyman in me for better or for worse, a commonness, and I always would.

These were the days at the Hall of Fame when the ceremonies were NOT televised. People got up and were glorious, hateful, hilarious, spiteful, smashed, insane and often deeply moving. If you were still enmeshed in intergroup grudges and fighting, the podium at the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame was your one last shot at sticking it in a little deeper to that guy or those guys. The Hall of Fame induction—by its nature, a moment of reflection—brought out the best and worst in folks and was never less than wildly entertaining. These were the days when rock’s true giants were still being inducted. You’d find yourself onstage at night, not just between Mick and George, but alongside
of Keith Richards, with Bob Dylan to your left, B. B. King on your right, Smokey Robinson to his left, Jeff Beck stage-side with Les Paul. It was a living pageant of Guy Peellaert’s early illustrations of the gatherings of rock’s Olympus,
Rock Dreams
. What resulted musically
was often a train wreck but there was something to just being there. There amid your dreams, your gods, your heroes, like
a misplaced stowaway on the ride of his life. It was a rock da Vinci’s
Last Supper
, and Steve and I often ruminated on how we felt we’d been born at exactly the right moment. We were teenagers in the sixties, when rock and radio had their golden age, when the best pop music was also the most popular, when a new language was being formed and spoken to young people all across the world, when it
remained an alien dialect to most parents, when it defined a community of souls wrapped in the ecstasy and confusions of their time but connected in blood brotherhood by the disciple’s voice of their local deejay.